Back by popular demand, The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition faithfully re-imagines the internationally-acclaimed classic game (originally released in 1990) for original and new audiences alike. The development team at LucasArts is bringing the game into the modern era with an all new re-imagined contemporary art style, a...

Packages that include this game

Buy Monkey Island: Special Edition Bundle

Recommended By Curators

"Lead Guybrush Treepwood in this incredible point-and-click adventure that let's you switch in realtime from the original to a glorious remake."

Steam Big Picture

About This Game

Back by popular demand, The Secret of Monkey Island™: Special Edition faithfully re-imagines the internationally-acclaimed classic game (originally released in 1990) for original and new audiences alike. The development team at LucasArts is bringing the game into the modern era with an all new re-imagined contemporary art style, a re-mastered musical score, full voiceover, and an in-depth hint system to help players through the game’s side-splitting puzzles. Purists will also delight in the ability to seamlessly switch between the updated hand-drawn re-imagining and the original classic version.
The game's twisty plot leads our naive hero on a hilarious, swash-buckling search for the fabled secret of Monkey Island. Tales of pirate wealth lure him to the port of Mêlée with high hopes, no money, and insatiable curiosity. If clever enough, he will win the confidence of Mêlée's pirates and find himself blown by the winds of fate toward the terrifying and legendary Monkey Island -- an adventure that would chill the bones of even the most bloodthirsty buccaneer.

THE SECRET OF MONKEY ISLAND: SPECIAL EDITION - A LucasArts Classic beautifully and masterfully reworked

|| 9.5 ||

Score

Comment

Graphics

9

Simply stunning, switching between the original graphics and the special edition you can really appreciate the time the artists have taken to faithful reproduce the backgrounds, characters and animations.

Audio

9

Excellent music (I mean come on! its monkey Island I don't think I will ever get that tune out of my head) and really well done voice acting for all the characters.

Gameplay

10

Ok, first I admit I am completely biased here: I love Monkey Island. Back from the days when I first got it to run on my 268 (I know showing my age) this game was something special. Monkey Island is one of the classic games from the golden age of point and click adventure games where LucasArts and Sierra ruled supreme with games like Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max and the Kings Quest series. The controls have been reworked, making them more user friendly for a modern audience, but are still faithful to the original and don't detract from the game in anyway. Even if you weren't old enough to appreciate these games the first time round they are masterpieces and I feel stand the test of time.

Story

10

The game is pretty much all about the story (a truly amazing story), and while you are free to do some exploring around the islands and some trial and error with the puzzles, the story is essentially linear (so don't expect an open world game). The dialogue is full of dry humour and the situations (and solutions to puzzles) fantastical, absurd and brilliant. While the story has many aspects that will appeal to younger players (slapstick humor), much of the humour will appeal to adults. The puzzles are challenging but not to the point of frustration and are worked into the story well.

Replayability

7

If you have played the game its likely to be memorable enough that you will know the solutions to the puzzles, but its still good fun, and was for me very nostalgic.

Overall

9.5

Completely biased review, take from it what you will, but we all have childhood games special to us and this was mine. Good times

The Secret of Monkey Island - a game reverently enshrined in a hallowed place of honor from the golden age of adventure games. The Secret of Monkey Island is indeed a definitive masterpiece of adventure gaming and one of the most important games in its genre. It's also incredible fun to play, even today. While the Special Edition is a mixed bag, the underlying game is as funny and charming as it has always been. Every gamer deserves to treat themselves to this timeless masterpiece.

The Secret of Monkey Island was a watershed game for Lucas Arts. While their earlier efforts were also excellent (especially Zak McKracken, which is so unfairly forgotten), The Secret of Monkey Island is where everything comes together and the stage is set for a truly incredible run of masterpiece adventure games that would culminate with 1998's Grim Fandango - the greatest adventure game of all time. The Secret of Monkey Island takes the brilliant ideas in Loom and for the first time, fully realizes them. The Secret of Monkey Island is a game that refuses to allow the player to reach a dead end - one of the most maddening aspects of earlier adventure games where the player could reach a point in the game where further progress was impossible due to the lack of an item missed earlier in the game. This required reloading an older save game, or even restarting the game entirely. Not fun. The Secret of Monkey Island also refuses to kill the player. Unlike so many other early adventure games where death was a frequent and often unforeseeable occurrence, Monkey Island recognizes that dying is unnecessary and detracts from the fun. The heart of adventure games is the exploration, story, and puzzles - and these are exactly the elements that The Secret of Monkey Island embodies. The Secret of Monkey Island thus laid the foundation upon which the future of adventure gaming would be built. No longer were adventure gamers going to be satisfied with unforeseeable deaths or maddening dead ends.

Not only is the game a hallmark of the genre, but it is also a joy to play. The characters are simply drawn, but charming. Mighty pirate wannabe Guybrush Threepwood is a hilarious lead character and he is impossible to dislike. His one liners will have you rolling. Even some of the dialog choices you don't choose will have you snickering. The story of Guybrush's quest to become a pirate is a wonderful mash-up of pulp piracy cliches. There's buried treasure, thrilling sword fights, voodoo magic, mysterious islands, and even cannibals. It's an inherently lighthearted and silly game, and every one of those elements (and much more) are inverted or lampooned in very funny ways.

The Special Edition update, however, is a mixed bag. The game's graphics have been updated for significantly higher resolutions than the game's original 640x480 resolution and now supports widescreen resolutions. I have mixed feelings about the update. There is a certain flatness to the graphics work that I don't find attractive. I do give the artists credit, however, for their attempt to remain very faithful to the original artwork as well as subsequent games in the series. The animations are also rather rough. Characters moonwalk around the screen in a decidedly unnatural way and there are some clipping issues. All of these faults are almost certainly due to Lucas Arts not investing enough resources and trying to get by on the cheap. It's a shame, because there is indeed potential for a wonderful remake. The game also now supports full voice acting for all characters using the familiar voices from the later Monkey Island games. The main cast is wonderful, but some of the supporting voices are a bit rough. Also, some of the jokes are ruined with the poor timing of the audio - for instance, try asking the Men of Low Moral Fiber in town about what's in the keg. It doesn't work like it does in text. The other poor aspect of the Special Edition is the changes to the inventory and verb (interaction) system. The game no longer has the classic SCUMM verbs in the lower portion of the screen along with inventory items. The inventory must now be accessed via keyboard hotkey, and verbs must be selected via mouse scroll wheel or hot key. This is a significant downgrade, in my opinion. The original system was more streamlined and allowed for faster interactions. There was one puzzle in the game that I couldn't manage in the Special Edition due to the cumbersome inventory system, but can easily accomplish in the original. I won't spoil it for you, but will say that it involves grog.

The truly brilliant aspect of the Special Edition, however, is that the original, unaltered game is included and can be seamlessly switched between. Essentially, you get two games and you can try them out and see which you like better, or complete the game both ways. I still prefer the older version, but I'm an old grey beard gamer. As I see it, there's just no improving on perfection, and The Secret of Monkey Island is a very near perfect adventure.

This is the funniest game I've ever played. The writing in this game alone makes it one of the best games you can buy. The soundtrack is also spectacular and the graphics are plenty stylish. Only real downside to this game is the puzzles can feel a bit ridiculous at times.

The Secret of Monkey Island is one of the best games ever made, SO BUY IT!

Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition is a 2009 remake of old classic DOS point'n'click adventure title, that came out back in 1990. This version actually allows switching between original and remake on-the-fly. If you just want to play original, you can do it pretty much from beggining to the end, with almost no changes!

Monkey Island itself is a classic LucasArts adventure game. It's well remembered for it's pirate (including voodoo) setting and humor, having world to expore and having puzzles to break head against, guessing what they want player to do. By that point, adventures games already had point'n'click setting in place, just clicking on needed verb and using it on object. Just clicking on object itself always uses the most logical verb (and often the only one possible), so you may just forget of this aspect.The game is divided into three chapters, the first one being the biggest and most open one, travelling on Melee Island, talking around and trying to complete three main objectives in order to become pirate, while starting to figure out what Le Chuck has to do in this game. Second chapter has you on another island, bigger in space, but less in NPCs, just having this funnily annoying slightly crazed inhabitant of island dropping in and out. Final chapter, "Kicks Butt", kicks some serious butts. Linear, short, but bumps you up and is very worthy compared to Adventure games.Now, being classic adventure game, it's more concentrated on non-stop solving of 'puzzles' and interaction, with the only action sequences being sword fighting. Well, not exactly what you think. INSULT sword fighting, used only in chapter 1 anyway. Worth noting, you have to beat such "battles" by choosing correct reply to insults, while later throwing your own. Heck, most of them is spend on "farming" new insult and replies, by losing, to collect them all and beat the Swordmaster.

Otherwise, standart classic LucasArts. Which means few things. First, there is no way to die or get stuck in dead end in this game, so you can do stupid things all the way you want, unlike classic Sierra. Second, you can choose few options in conversation, but none changes the plot or progression - it's either a puzzle by itself or "choose your own joke to make". (You can even choose "what we have learned" reply in the end of the game!). Third, the puzzles are either easy and logical or they are hard and make no common sense. Quite a common thing in classic adventure games, doing something unexpect for goals that plotwise aren't the ones you would want to do, Like, suddenly finding out that you have and actually can 'combine' items in your inventory, for single puzzle, to rescue some shady figure who probably wouldn't be much of good if freed.

Special Edition keeps all of those and provides an upgrade to both graphics and sound, while messing around controls. Hands down, music is superior to soundblaster and art has more resolution than what original offered. But the gap is too big and those who grew with original may be put off. Difference between pixels-art that leaves something for imagination and defined art, you see. Where main character, Guybrush, was a normal guy in black and white in original, with who most people could reliate, becomes character in it's own with that hair. And sure thing, close-ups aren't drawn in same realistical way. But otherwise, it's fancy in it's own!It also added voice acting to it, but because of limitation of original engine, it has awkward pause between each line, putting some players off. And once again, "it's not the way we imagined it when we played original".

And you can switch between original and remake on the fly, with press of single button, no loading required! Nice! Though, you can notice that animation in remake somehow feels to follow animation of original closely, having same amount of animation frames, not always having art to make same sense in these cases.

Actually, it switches not only visual and audio, but interface too. And it's another reason to stay on original, being made with in way to allow it to be controlled by gamepads on consoles as well. It tries to be as good as in modern point'n'clicks, but clumpsier. Much. Main fault comes from technical aspect, actually, where for some reason sometimes it playes like the actual cursor is placed lower/higher than it's actually shown.And sure thing, to keep modern players sane, it incorporated hints system, when on the magical press of button, you get a hint hint hint. Good joy, much needed. Not always as straight as you would want it to be though, but anything helps.

Thus, nice remake of classic adventure game, which most recommend to play at least once, having humor, story and some puzzles that make no sense, this fault of adventure games eased up with hints. Not too long either and with charm.

This is an excellent remake of the cult classic point and click adventure game. I think they have gone as far as they could to improve sound - graphics - while keeping in touch with the original. And they have left the core game - the puzzles - dialogues intact. The voice acting is consistent with later titles in the series as they have recruited the same roster of voice actors for the main characters. The ability to swap back and forth between the classic edition and the improved edition is genius, but it does get strangely addictive and I find myself wishing for some kind blinking mode where it would constantly swap back and forth in a slow pace just so I can apprciate the best of both worlds. If you are not familiar with the series but like adventure games it is fair enough to say that as long as you can take a light hearted adventure and do not mind old school adventure gaming puzzles you will end up making quite a lot of nice gaming memories for yourself and will no doubt find yourself laughing out at the absurdity of this yet believable pirate universe.

The Secret of Monkey Island is a very classic and revolutionary game. Although it was made in the 90s, it will always be a brilliant game, and this special edition shows that it can even stay up to date with modern video games (Although you can never beat the classic graphics).

The Secret of Monkey Island series is one of the most funny games series that I have ever played, with the brilliantly weakened forth wall, and the cute child-like innocence of Guybrush Threepwood, every time I replay a Monkey Island game I cannot help but to laugh at the jokes and the little references, and every time I replay it, I always find new brilliantly absurd commands and interactions.

The special edition of this game is in some aspects an improvement, but in most, quite a disappointment. The inventory is different, there's voice acting, the Stump Joke is missing and a few more differences. The special edition shouldn't be thing to deter you from buying, or from not buying this game. If you don't like the notion of a special edition, and would rather the classic, floppy disk version, you shouldn't let that stop you from buying this version, quite a lot of the special edition factors can be turned off and, apart from the missing Stump Joke, not much else was changed. If you love modern, newer games, and feel that old games are in the past, you should still not let that stop you from buying this game, for the special edition has updated the game to look sleek and new, and if you cannot stand having to read dialogue, just turn on the voice acting.

The Special vs Classic edition aside, the dialogue in Money Island is very funny, Guybrush Threepwood constantly breaks the forth wall, so much so, that by the time of the second game, you would have forgotten that it was ever there. There are lines of dialogue that are just so perfect in the game, that you simply cannot help but to pick, sometimes it is Guybrush Threepwood saying he wants to be a fire-fighter (instead of a pirate) or him asking if two brothers are his mother. The plot of the game is not that thick and at some times it barely even makes any sense. But the love story in the whole series of Monkey Island games is the cutest love story you could ever see, with the stupid, innocent Guybrush, and the strong, independent Elaine, why they are even together boggles the best of the fans.

There are many good things about The Secret of Monkey Island, but one big factor that cannot be turned off or on is the difficulty. This game is very, VERY hard, because it is an old fashioned point and click game, it has absurd logic, Guybrush Threepwood cannot reach something a few metres off the ground and thinks that if he mixes red flowers with meat it will poison it, also somehow he is able to use a kitchen pot as a helmet.... The game thus feels as if it goes on forever when you play it, whether you spend ages pondering over a specific puzzle, executing trial and error, or you have a walkthrough up in a tab, trying to not overuse the hints, you will spend quite a bit of time on the game. Sometimes it is merely a simple puzzle that with stitch you up, or maybe it will be the whole game, either way, I heavily recommend having some sort of hint system or walkthrough handy, just in case.

I would heavily recomend this game to you, even if you are a very serious person, the humor is not all there is to this game, it has a brilliant soundtrack and very difficult puzzles, and on a whole is quite an enoyable game.

PROS: Remastered game looks amazing, remastered music is spot-on, voices are all great and fit with the rest of the series. Story and dialogue are wonderful. Puzzles are outlandishly-memorable, but entirely possible. I absolutely love the ability to switch back and forth between classic and remastered to see exactly what was changed.

CONS: Most people don't like the way Guybrush looks in this one, understandably-so. Someone even made a full mod to fix his hair. Dialogue stops are necessary to keep the game in-tact with the original flow, but can be a little distracting once voices are added to the mix.

OVERALL: 10 years ago, Ron Gilbert said in a magazine interview that he was amazed at how often Secret Of Monkey Island is brought up, 15 years after its creation. I wonder if he's realized yet that he's made a piece of gaming history.

A really hilarious and difficult point-and-click adventure game, which avoids being too difficult by having no deaths. The script is fantastically funny, coming from the mind of Tim Schafer, and the story almost seems there just to allow as much comedy as possible. This game is a classic and the ability to swap between classic and redone visuals and audio is fantastic.

It's Monkey Island, what more is there to say? I preferred the original graphics but it's nice to see a Steam edition of this. Now they just need to start selling fine leather jackets from the Steam Store...

An absolute classic and one of the best SCUMM ever made. The new graphics look nice without taking away too much from the original game. A must buy for anyone that remembers the original or wants to get into classic PC gaming.

This game had it's highlights; while I found most of the dialogue ok, it made me laugh a few times. I have to admit I relied heavily on the hint function (pressing the 'H' key in-game) to solve the puzzles, which took the challenge out. Overall, I still enoyed it, and it's intersting tosee how they updated the graphics from the original, and I feel it's aged well. Easiest boss fight ever in a game, so don't expect it to be like a Legend of Zelda game. ****

I bought this game quite some time ago and only recently decided to sit down and play it "again" for the for the first time. Yes, you read correctly. I played this game years ago when it was on CD rom. Many of you probably don't even know what that is. LOL

Needless to say it was nice to play it again after much time had passed. The puzzles were still challenging, but not as much as the first time around. The main draw for this game is the remastering that went into it. Voice acting and updated graphics definetly make this game a blast from the past and appealing to newcomers of the adventure game genre.

I would recommend this game to anyone looking for a funny game to play or a reminder of when adventure games had a firm foothold on the gaming world.

What is the SECRET of Monkey Island? Well your going to have to figure that out yourself. But one thing that is not a secret, is how amazing this game is. Quite possibly the first adventure game I ever played and the game that got me hooked to the genre. I love the music, the humor, the storyline, and almost everything about the game. Now looking back 25 years later I do see that the game is not completely without flaw. First, the game was made in 1990 so the graphics aren't all that great and there are no voices. Second, the game is relatively short by today's standards. This is not something that bothers me and shouldn't for most people, but might to the more recent fans of adventure gaming. Luckily the Special Edition gives the best of both worlds graphically (sorry but the story is still just as short), as old fans and new fans can enjoy the game they would want to play. Because trust me, there are some old fans that would cringe at the new look. The classic version and new version can be switched seemlessly by hitting F10. The old version staying true to its ancient (voodoo?) roots of a verb menu and an inventory box. The new version many good additions added to its gameplay as the new version intoduces 3D art, voices, and a much larger screen of play (due to the fact that the verb menu and an inventory box have been removed). Although I do enjoy a much larger screen, this is the one thing about the new version I am not fond of. They do have a drop down menu for the verb menu by hitting Ctrl or V as well as one for the inventory by hitting Alt or I, but this feels like more of a hassle than the old game used to be. At the end of the day, this game is a keeper. So don the adventurer's cap and become "Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate!"

But, it's definately worth completing. The jokes are great, the story is nice. This edition is probably the best one we'll get!Grab the complete edition packed with the second part. You won't regret it.